The Hours We Have

chapter twenty-three

I was standing in an alley.

An eerie silence filled my ears like the white static of a television in a dark room, except everything was muted. The only thing I could hear was the pounding of my heart, it battered against my ribs, desperate to escape its cage because I knew this alley. I had been here before and I didn't want to be here now. 

My eyes drifted to the lonely dumpster that rested in the shadow of the building. The blood in my veins seemed to freeze, a wave of icy realization sweeping over my head, and I couldn't move. I couldn't close my eyes, I couldn't look away. 

"No, no, no." I was chanting. My pleas echoed around me like a taunt, a mockery of how I couldn't open my eyes because I knew I was asleep. My mind had me trapped in one of the memories I wanted to scratch out of my brain with my nails. I wished I never went with the police that day, I wished I had just let Mikeal go. 

Suddenly, I realized I was standing much closer to that dumpster. There was no one else around and I felt terror crawling its way up my throat. I didn't want to look, I didn't want to see the horrors that my mind conjured into this hellish reality, but my eyes were unblinking. 

Blood. There was fresh blood on the concrete beneath my feet, it trailed all the way to the edge of the dumpster, and then there was a giant smear of blood over the edge of the dumpster. Not just blood, though, because I realized with horror that pieces of flesh were stuck there. My chest tightened with a scream, but I couldn't make a noise. 

I knew my parents were in there. I had never actually seen their bodies, the crime scene had been cleaned up, the funeral was a closed casket, but it never stopped my mind from filling in the blanks. My imagination took its darkest turn with night terrors, something I never wished upon anyone. 

They had found the murders, they were locked up for life, but disposing of bodies in a dumpster in an abandoned alley was atrocious, and disrespectful, but who was I to say anything? I couldn't even look away from the gory picture my mind conjured. 

A grunt close by nearly scared me out of my skin. My vision switched to the spot beside the dumpster, and then I was trying to scream for the second time. 

A boy with hazel hair was collapsed against the wall, his arm bound around his stomach, and there was blood everywhere. Dark red stained his hair, covered his skin, and pooled on the concrete, oozing from the grotesque cuts that sliced open his body.

But it wasn't just the fact that I watched him take his final breath, the blood loss from his stab wounds finally stealing his life, it was the fact that I recognized him. 

It was Roman. 

I sprung awake with a scream lodged in my throat. 

My entire body was trembling and I felt like I was drowning from the lack of oxygen in my lungs. I gasped, unwelcome tears riveting down my cheeks, and I didn't realize I wasn't alone until I felt something brush against my left side. I almost shrieked, it was so dark I couldn't see anything in my room, but I heard a low, concerned whine, and I realized it was Finley. 

I instantly wound my arms around Finley's neck, pulling him into me, and he didn't protest as I buried my face in his fur. He began licking my arm, the warmth of his tongue easing the chill on my skin, and I calmed a little before I launched into another panic attack. His gentle breathing became the pace I matched with my own. 

My chest was aching like someone had cut it open and tried to steal my heart, those images of Roman were permanently etched into the back of my mind, even though it hadn't been real.